


At The Edge of a Dream

by Lt_Zoe_Jebkanto



Series: The Bonds Between Us [23]
Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-19
Updated: 2016-06-19
Packaged: 2018-07-15 22:29:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7241377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lt_Zoe_Jebkanto/pseuds/Lt_Zoe_Jebkanto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>2151.  It's only a few months until the launch of NX01- Enterprise.  The final crew selections are underway when Lt. Trip Tucker is caught between past and future... at the edge of his greatest dream and his worst nightmare...</p>
            </blockquote>





	At The Edge of a Dream

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cap'n Frances](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Cap%27n+Frances).



> Something surprising always comes out of the most challenging experiences. Chimney Rock... need I say more?
> 
> Thanks to Adm. OhBoy!Archer for the challenge to write the story and then, afterward, for the beta.

At The Edge of a Dream

Spring, 2151

“How you doing, Lieutenant?” The Commander’s voice sounded from above and ahead of him.

Trip Tucker scanned the ancient, rough-hewn stairs leading up the side of the bluff, estimating the number of steps until he reached the spot where Jonathan Archer stood. “No problems, Commander!” He called back, shifting his pack and wiping a trickle of sweat out of his eyes. 

It was getting hot, now that they were out from under the shelter of the trees. Still, it would only be a couple more minutes until he reached the plateau and had another good refreshing drink of water and a rest break. 

“All right, see you up ahead!” Turning, Archer vanished beyond the lip of the ledge. 

Trip resumed climbing, matching his breaths to the rhythm of his footsteps. Almost there. Almost… there. Only another what? Fifty or sixty steps?

The bluff hadn’t seemed all that high, viewed from the start of the trail, when most of it was hidden by the curve of the land and the dense, summer-green foliage. 

Probably a good thing. Trip didn’t mind scrambling around the top of a warp engine or over a catwalk, but after childhood falls off a roof and out of a tree, outdoor heights were never gonna rank up there on his top-ten favorites list. Not like they did for Commanders Archer and Hernandez, who actually took their off-duty weekends to go mountain climbing together! 

(Of course, half the attraction of those treks could be the company… and, just maybe, the privacy!)

Two more steepish stairs, then three, four. All right, heights weren’t a favorite, but there were ways to deal with them. Some concentrated will banished the occasional involuntary jelly-shivers in his knees. A few focused deep breaths kept his adrenaline from running too high. The rest, and most important, was staying alert and paying close attention to the demands of his surroundings. 

Yeah, he could deal. Especially when this hike was part of the final selection process for Starfleet’s first deep-space mission aboard NX-01 Enterprise. The Commander had said, back when he, Trip and A. G. Robinson proved a prototype vessel could exceed Warp Two, he wanted Tucker as Chief Engineer when he got his own command. Already this past year, Trip had lived on the edge of his dream of deep-space exploration, as he headed up the team bringing one after another of the ship’s warp systems on line. 

Still, a lot more would be required of him than knowing his way around an engine once they were out among the stars. Like being away details to planets with diverse and unexpected conditions. 

So far today, things had gone pretty well, even when the green canopy of tree branches overhead thinned, then gave way to an uninterrupted view of cloudless blue skies. Of course, most of his attention had been focused on the placement of his feet on uneven grey surfaces, the realistic pacing of his exertions in the mid-afternoon heat and keeping within a reasonable distance behind Commander Archer.

Only another twenty, thirty steps now until the plateau. They wouldn’t be effortless anymore, like the first couple hundred had been. Or just kind of wearing, like the next three or four hundred after that, when his breaths came a little deeper, a little faster and his quad muscles began giving him gentle reminders that they were getting a nice workout here, and wanted him to stop more often for some hydrating, thanks.

He’d had that one rough moment when, unclipping the water-bottle from his belt, he’d taken a moment to savor the refreshing tendrils off light breeze across his neck and the run of cool liquid down his throat, then glanced over his shoulder and realized how far he’d come.

How far… up… he’d come.

Something in his stomach had jiggled. He’d leaned a hand on the reassuring grey wall of the rock-face beside him as he gaged the shape and texture of the stony surfaces ahead and where his feet should go. A long, deliberate breath made the sensation subside. 

It had been harder going after that. But he’d made up his mind to quit keeping track of the stairs he’d climbed and focused on the top of the trail. That helped. A lot. And now- great! It looked like only fifteen, twenty steps left! 

And it hadn’t been that bad. Even the narrowest steps must’ve been, what? Two feet wide? Oh, come on, get real. Make that three. And hadn’t he repelled up and down cliff-sides as tall and steep as this bluff during Starfleet survival training? 

So what if he’d been strapped in a harness then, with a rope to hang onto? Or that his concentration had been so taken up with handholds and footholds and the stark, grey view of the rock-face in front of his nose that he hadn’t had time to think of much else? Those heights hadn’t been so different than this, had they?

He was gonna make it. Had to make it. Enterprise was the big goal, waiting out beyond today’s exercise. No matter that, after all the months of testing and training, he could almost feel it within reach, right now he’d settle for the cave and at the far end of the plateau. It’d be great to sit a few minutes, have a long, slow drink of water, munch a few nuts, enjoy the taste of their salt on his tongue and compare notes with the other people in the group. 

Shouldn’t be more than another twenty, thirty minutes til then. The ground on the plateau was supposed to be a little rougher than on the carved stairs, but more or less level. That thought had his quads gearing up to celebrate. He’d handled rough terrain during earlier training exercises. Like that week long stretch on the Appalachian Trail last spring when three of his companions dropped out due to injuries or exhaustion. Then came the four-day spelunking trek through caves in New Mexico. He’d loved the rock formations with all their shapes and colors, while many members of the group said the place gave them the jitters, that the walls were closing in on them. He hadn’t worried about rough terrain during the time in the Australian Outback, either. Only about keeping going in the wilting heat, and swallowing- then keeping down- those squiggle-legged sugar ants, as well as all that tough, stringy snake-meat.

Yeah, he figured he was almost past the worst of this climb. Not that he’d allow himself to be over-confident once he was on the plateau. Just because it was level didn’t mean there couldn’t be a twisted or broken ankle if he didn’t pay attention to the rough places. But he’d made reasonable time on the up-climb and he wasn’t going to rush himself into carelessness.

Gen steps. Almost there.

He’d make it. No sweat. Except, maybe for wondering what the Commander would write about him in his evaluation. 

Tucker completed the course. Made it within the required time parameters. Used good problem solving skills. Final recommendation is for posting as Chief Engineer, NX01, Enterprise…

Five steps.

He could just see over the top of the highest step. Yeah, it looked flat up there all right. He began to grin. Four, three, steps to go. Two. One. Yes! He’d made it! 

He was rewarded by another brush of wind against his face and through his sweaty hair. Sighing in relieved satisfaction he raised his gaze to locate Commander Archer.

And without warning, it smacked in, hard all around him, with stunning force.

The dream. The scariest, most relentless nightmare of his life!

Damn! He hadn’t had it in, what? Over twenty something years? Not since he was a kid. But it was here now all right.

And not in the half-shaped, half-colored images he’d have remembered if he’d ever bothered thinking back to the thing. No, this was in full, right-in-your-face color, all those vivid golds, blues, greys, and greens that should have been beautiful! Sunlight, sky, rock and, far below, just showing beyond the edge of the trail, the tree-tops.

Trip froze as every muscle in his ankles, knees and gut remembered, then shivered into instant jelly.

He drew a breath, stretched it out two, three, four calming seconds, then lifted his left foot all of what had to be twelve inches, planted it in a shadowy space between two good sized rocks, then put his right foot in front of it. Not a big step. Shoulda been no work at all. Except this place looked so much like the dream that he couldn’t quite shake the inevitable feeling that, after all the years of letting him think he’d escaped its clutches, it had returned for him at last.

There wasn’t gonna be any blinking the dream away this time, or telling himself he had to- ! Had to wake up now! He was already there.

He’d expected when he got here to take a triumphant look back down at where he’d come from. Maybe see trees below. But viewing it all at a comfortable distance from the edge as he enjoyed the plateau’s wide surface and he took a good, rehydrating drink, maybe with a hand once again touching the rise of another rock-face beside him. One that was nice and solid and not a part of this exercise!

But the plateau was scarcely wider than the trail. 

And there was no sturdy surface to lean against and gather himself. The trail’s other edge dropped away as steeply as the one beside the stairs. The treetops down that side looked no bigger than bright green broccoli florets, swaying a little as the afternoon wind moved their branches.

God, up til now, he’d always kind of liked broccoli.

Again, his stomach jiggled. 

He knew what was gonna happen. Ahead of him, little by little, the trail was gonna begin growing narrower…

No, that was the dream… No matter how vivid the idea was, he had to remember that. Only the dream. The real trail was gonna be fine.

Yeah, right, try telling that to his knees. 

The trail would narrow, narrow, narrow, until there was no room even to turn around. It would start slanting downwards, growing steeper and steeper… Momentum would push him onward even if he tried to stay absolutely still. Gravity would grab hold of him then and pull, pull, pull, harder and harder, no matter how he fought against it. The ground would dissolve away beneath him and he’d find himself tumbling forward, There was nothing under him now. Only the tiny world below , growing bigger, bigger, rushing up to meet him. Falling, he was falling with no way to stop, however loudly he tried to scream through the silence of his thoughts that he hadda wake up, wake up, wake up right now, damn it, before it was too late!

Come on, Trip, that was a kid’s dream! He was gonna look ahead at the perfectly level trail and take one and then another and another step until he reached the cave and the solid reality of his companions.

But the thing was so damn vivid! Like all those other times before, it had come in on every side of him, then clung like a suffocating second skin.

Despite the heat, sweat trickled, cold and clammy down the back of Trip’s neck. He could hear the mounting thunder of his heart and the rasp of his own panting breaths.

Still, he’d managed to take one step forward, hadn’t he? And now there would be another. Good. Every muscle inside him vibrated with dread, but he could manage just one more step, right? Maybe then he’d take a little pause to grab some water. To take a couple deep breaths. To steady himself against those echoes of the pas. To damn well get a grip! 

But it was such a scary dream! It had chased him through his childhood, showing up every month or so from when he was maybe five or six years old until he was somewhere in middle-school.

Damn! He couldn’t get the carabineer at his belt to unclip. It kept popping out from under his sweat-slippery fingers.

He’d always recognized it, right from the beginning. Knew exactly what would happen, because it unfolded the same way every time. He was moving forward along a high place, when he saw that both sides were dropping steeply away from him. 

Like he was doing now! 

And he’d discovered that nothing was gonna change it, even after he learned to tell himself “It’s only a dream. Only a dream! Only…!” Because recognizing that didn’t keep the fear from growing and growing! And telling himself “wake up, come on, Trip, wake up! Ya gotta wake up now, right now! didn’t keep him from being swept forward toward the tiny, slanting spot where there was nothing left to do but fall, fall, fall… 

Until with a kind of thump he’d find himself staring, wide-eyed up into darkness, all tangled up in sweat-soaked sheets, with his stomach clenched like a fist and his horrified heart thundering loud in his ears…

Then, sometime in middle-school, he’d read about déjà vu. Hey! Maybe that was all that dream had been, just a couple of tangled memory fragments out of his past, maybe from tumbling out of that tree, or off the roof. Events that were familiar enough to recognize, but too old and vague to sort out into something that made sense. Yeah! Great! Déjà vu! He liked that idea! So, problem solved! There’d be nothing for him to worry about when the dream came next time. 

What a relief that had been!

And it lasted until the very next week.

Then he’d gone to church with his folks and heard about how dreams were sometimes sent by God as prophecy… As warnings. As foreshadowings of what was to come!

Oh, holy crap! Not the past… The future! That dream was supposed to tell him something about the future!

That idea had kept him awake, staring at the moonlight creeping across the ceiling. He’d lain there far, far into the night, waiting, wondering… But even when, as the first grey light painted the window and he fell into exhausted sleep, the dream hadn’t come. 

Not that night. Or the next. Not that week. Or that month. And it didn’t come the month after that either. Time wet by and after a while the memory of that awful dream began to fade. He quit thinking about it, or even wondering whether it had really gone away for good.

And now… after all these years… here it was again! Big and bad as ever. 

But this time… This time it was real!

Trip took a deep breath, lifted the water to his lips with hands he couldn’t quite keep from shaking and managed two, three, four long swallows.

Water splashed down the front of his shirt. Cold, cold water. 

He squinted into the brightness of the afternoon trail. Somewhere, after his next few steps, it would start to narrow, narrow, narrow. Slant down and down…

Somehow he managed to recap the bottle, though he could see the scatter of dark spots on the sun-baked rocks where liquid had spattered. Where the trail would narrow and gravity would start to tug until…

Thinking about it wasn’t gonna help. 

Not trusting himself to refasten the carabineer, he clutched the water bottle and forced his left foot forward. Found beautiful solid rock beneath it. Then his right foot. There was a resting place for that one, too. He took another step. Good ground. Hard ground. Another step. Yes! Another. 

He knew, he knew, he knew this wasn’t the dream, but his drying throat, his thundering heart and his trembling muscles weren’t sure they believed him. 

Why didn’t childhood nightmares grow smaller when the kid got bigger?

And the trail stretched so damn far, ahead of him. The cave was at the end of it somewhere. Had the Commander mentioned the distance before beginning the climb?

God, that coulda been years ago. And it was hard to think, to remember how far it would be, over the sound of his own loud breathing.

Wait! What was that up ahead? No cave, but… A large, black boulder maybe fifty yards ahead. He wouldn’t look at the sides of the trail. Only at the ground in front of his feet and that big, black rock! 

He managed another step. Solid ground again, and now the rock was two feet closer. 

Right foot, left foot, right. But any moment, the ground would dissolve under him…

No, Trip! Can’t keep thinking that. It doesn’t matter how it looks here. Just go slow, go careful. The trail’s fine. It’s gonna stay fine. Gotta stay fine.

God, if the Commander knew what irrational things he was thinking right now, there would go his chances to be posted to the NX vessel! 

Jon Archer was his friend, his damn good friend, but having a crew he could rely on out there in deep space was a matter of survival, not of friendship. Trip knew himself to be a good engineer, but technical know-how wasn’t worth a damn if he couldn’t back it up with courage and steady nerves.

He mopped sweat out of his eyes. Took another step. Forty yards to the black rock. 

He paused at the crunch of gravel behind him.

The girl who’d hit the trail five minutes after his own start time was catching up. Her footfalls sounded sure and even.

“You okay, Lieutenant?” she asked.

“Needed…” He realized he was panting. “A hydration break.”

“You want me to stay with you a little while?” she offered, studying his face. “You’re looking kind of shaky.”

“Nah,” he shook his head. “I’ll be okay in a minute or so.”

And he would, wouldn’t he?

“Okay.” She said and, to his amazement, slipped easily around him and ambled down the trail with a smooth and easy gait.

Trip watched her go. Drew a deep breath, then followed. Moved his right foot. Set it down. Lifted his left. Reminded himself the rocks were not slanting. He knew it. But it would just be so much easier to believe if the feeling of that damn dream wasn’t still so close all around him. Thirty yards to the rock now. And no, the trail was not getting narrower. Twenty yards. Ten. He took another step, another. Another.

The rock was almost within reach. Only three or four more steps. But his knees and ankles were shaking so hard with fatigue it could have been miles. He stretched out the hand not grasping the water bottle. Brushed it with trembling fingers. The sun was warm on its solid and welcoming surface. He pressed his palm to it, savored the heat of it, then turned and, joint by careful joint, lowered himself down. Good. Solid. Nothing had ever felt so comfortable as that rock!

The dream was only a dream. At least for today. No déjà vu. No foreshadowing.

But he was spent. There were no reserves of strength or energy left. Gravity might not be planning to drag him over the edge of the plateau, but it was pressing down on him too hard for him to lift as much as the hand holding the water bottle. No way he could pull himself to his feet and go the next distance to the cave at the trail’s summit. He was way too tired to move, even with the time allowed for completing the hike melting away. 

Truth be told, he was surprised he’d gotten this far.

But Jon… the Commander… who’d be the Captain any day now… was probably gonna want himself a different Chief Engineer after this. 

Trip’s sigh came from weariness beyond exhaustion, by a sudden aching sadness that was heavier than the gravity. To have found himself on the edge of his wildest, his dearest dream of space exploration, and then to have it pounded into submission by his childhood’s worst nightmare, that was harder than anything he ever could’ve imagined! 

Working open the water bottle with hands that still trembled slightly, he took a long, slow swallow as two more members of the group approached, their voices lilting in cheerful conversation. At least that gesture along with a mouthful of water spared him from having to speak through the sorrow.

“Lieutenant?”

Taking another swallow, he nodded a n acknowledgement, then, still silent, waved them on with a hand that must have weighed fifty pounds.

He’d been sure, so damn sure, he could handle anything the Starfleet survival trainings could throw at him. Scuba diving. Winter camping. The Appalachian, the caves, the Outback… The description of the bluff hadn’t sounded bad. Hell, it hadn’t even looked bad. At least, not from the bottom.

But it really wasn’t the bluff that had thwarted him. Or drained every reserve of strength and energy he had, leaving him here on this rock, hollow and exhausted, was it? No! It was only his own crazy nightmare that he hadn’t even thought of in years!

Damn, he was too tired, even to feel humiliated. Or regret the words his old friend would have to write in his report.

Tucker did not complete the course within thee allotted time span. Failed even to reach the halfway point. Recommendation is that, though an excellent engineer, he be dropped from consideration for the NX crew, but, with his skills in mind, he be assigned ground duties at the design facility or shipyard at Eutopia Planetia or Jupiter Station… 

He’d have to face that. Face the painful reality of what had happened to him this afternoon and whatever consequences it might bring. But that would be for later. When he got some strength back. Some energy. For right now, he just needed to sit. To feel the sun, warm on his upturned face and his heavy eyelids, the rock strong and steady beneath him and how good it was not to move even so much as one single tired muscle.

Maybe, after that, whether it served any career purpose for him anymore or not, he’d consider whether there might…just might… be a way… to make it to… the cave… 

At least it would mean he’d tried to overcome his grown-up waking nightmare with as much determination as he’d fought that old one of his childhood.

Yeah… That’s what he’d do, but… after just another minute’s rest. Just another… 

He must have slept… drowsed anyway… because without any sense of time passing at all, he became aware of a quiet voice, somewhere out beyond his closed eyelids. 

“Lieutenant? Lieutenant Tucker?”

Archer’s voice. Jon’s…

“You all right, Trip?”

“Yeah, Commander.” His voice held the slurred sound of half-waking. “I’m okay.”

But as recognition that he was still sitting on a rock that was nowhere near the cave marking the end of this endurance challenge came back to him, Trip knew it was a lie.

 

He was anything but okay.

“You steady enough to head back down? A couple of our other hikers said they thought you might be dehydrated or something. That you didn’t seem so good.”

“Yeah, I think I’ll be steady enough,” he managed, looking up, both at his friend Jon and his commanding officer, not certain which Archer he was actually speaking to more. “I’m not sick or anything. I can make it. I just… Damn it all, I couldn’t get myself to keep on going any further!”

Archer’s hand rubbed his shoulder. Brisk, firm reassurance. “Happens to all of us sometimes, Trip.”

“Yeah, I guess. Probably screwed my chances of making the cut for Enterprise though, didn’t I?”

Archer’s green eyes widened in surprise. He didn’t rush to give an answer, or turn his gaze from Trip’s. Trip appreciated the honesty in that. Instead, after a long moment, he met Trip’s question with one of his own. “Why do you say that?”

It wasn’t a question he’d been expecting.

“I…” God, he hated to say the word, but there had never been anything less than honesty between the two of them. He sighed. “I… panicked.”

“When?”

“When I cleared the top of the steps, at the start of the plateau. When I saw the edges dropping away on both sides. I… I used to dream about that when I was a kid. Walking on a ledge, or maybe riding a bike on a road, that got narrower and narrower and then began to drop away…”

Archer was smiling a little. “Can’t say I’ve had that one. It sounds bad.”

“Yeah, it was.” Trip gave an involuntary shudder. He managed half a laugh, but heard the bitterness in it before it died away. “Real bad. The worst part’s knowing you don’t need a crewmember who gives in to panic.” 

It was unfortunate that he wasn’t too tired anymore to feel humiliation. Or to know he’d gotten so close to reaching his dream, to making the final cut, then falling apart.

“You’re not at the starting edge of the plateau now, are you?” asked Jonathan.

“I thought if I could… well, just get to this rock and, maybe rest a minute, I could go on a little further. Head for the cave..”

“Go beyond where you first thought you could?”

“Yeah.” Trip nodded. “Why?”

“Trip, everybody has limits. It isn’t bad to learn what they are. And then to try to surpass them. I don’t think there will be one of us who doesn’t come up against something too big to handle when we get out there, do you? I’m not looking for   
fearlessness. I’m looking for people who strive to get even a little way past the fear.”

“You’re not just sayin’ this because we’re friends, are you?”

“I think you know me better than that.”

Trip nodded. Smiled a little. “Yeah. You’re right. So…” He tried to make his next words sound a little casual. Tried not to think of the edge of the plateau giving way, or the edge of his dream crumbling out from under him, but of the future laying out there… even just a little ways out there… ahead of him. “I’m not out of the running for a place on Enterprise?”

“No.” Jonathan chuckled, a small, brief sound. There was a reflective note in it that had Trip wondering what nightmares of his own his old friend had had to battle through.  
“You’re not out of the running. Not because of anything that happened today.”

His hand touched Trip’s shoulder again in that quick, firm reassurance. This time his chuckle was full enough to crinkle the corners of his green eyes, even though his words were brisk. “But if you were being evaluated on your cooking, well, I’d have to think twice about that! Now, how you doing, Lieutenant? Do you think you’re ready to safely begin your way back down?”

Trip looked back along the trail and wiped a trickle of sweat from his forehead. He’d really come quite a distance, hadn’t he? A lot further than he’d realized along a trail that led out of his past, but now, as it turned him toward his future, looked reasonably wide. A trail that, if he used some concentrated will to banish the occasional jelly-shivers in his knees, took a few focused deep breaths, and most important, if he stayed alert to the demands of his surroundings, he believed he could handle.

He took a good long drink of water. His quads were gonna appreciate that.

Then he looked up to where Jonathan Archer stood beside him. “No problem, Commander.” He said.


End file.
